Barringer Crater (Meteor Crater)
Key facts
- Country
- United States
- Diameter
- 1.2 km
- Age
- about 50,000 years
- Location
- 35.03° N, 111.02° W
A sharp, bowl-shaped crater about 1.2 km across and some 170 m deep, with a raised rim and scattered blocks of ejected rock, in the open desert of northern Arizona.
Barringer Crater, better known as Meteor Crater, is the world's best-known and best-preserved young impact crater. It sits in the high desert of northern Arizona, about 60 km east of Flagstaff, and from its rim you look down into a vast, almost perfect bowl about 1.2 km wide and around 170 m deep.
The impact. About 50,000 years ago an iron meteorite roughly 50 m across struck the plateau here at a speed of perhaps 12 to 20 km/s. The impact released energy equivalent to a large nuclear explosion, blasting out millions of tonnes of rock and flipping the layers at the rim so that they now lie upside down. Most of the iron body was vaporised or melted, but thousands of fragments survived. These are known as the Canyon Diablo meteorites, named after a nearby canyon, and they have been collected across the surrounding plain since the nineteenth century.
A long argument. In 1891 the eminent geologist Grove Karl Gilbert investigated the crater. He considered an impact but concluded that a volcanic steam explosion was more likely, partly because he could find no buried iron mass. In 1903 the mining engineer Daniel Moreau Barringer came to the opposite conclusion. Convinced that a giant iron meteorite lay buried beneath the crater floor, he bought the land and spent more than two decades drilling in search of it. He never found it. In 1929 the astronomer Forest Ray Moulton calculated that such an impactor would have been almost entirely vaporised. Barringer died that same year, but he had been right about the impact.
Scientific proof. The final evidence came in 1960, when Eugene Shoemaker, Edward Chao and Beth Madsen found coesite, a high-pressure form of silica, in the crater's rocks. Shoemaker's detailed mapping showed how the crater's structure matched that of craters made by nuclear test explosions. His work laid the foundations of modern impact geology, and the crater is still where many geologists first learn about impacts.
Training astronauts. During the Apollo programme, astronauts trained at Meteor Crater to learn how to read the geology of craters on the Moon.
Visiting today. The crater is still owned by the Barringer family through a private company, and it has a visitor centre with exhibits, a large Canyon Diablo meteorite and viewing platforms on the rim. Guided walks follow part of the rim trail. Visitors are not allowed to enter the crater or remove rocks, and the surrounding land is private, so meteorite hunting there is not permitted without permission.
Did you know?
Daniel Barringer spent more than 20 years drilling for a giant iron mass that had almost entirely vaporised.
Rock layers in the crater rim were flipped over by the impact and now lie upside down.
Coesite found here in 1960 became a key test for recognising impact craters worldwide.